The Government maintains a careful guard over the schools.  A compulsory education law obliges parents, under fixed penalties, to send their children to school; and besides the common or primary schools, there are a number of academies, most of which receive some help from the Government, while all are under Government supervision.  The census gives the number of children between six and fifteen years of age at 6931; and there are 324 teachers, or one teacher for every twenty-seven children in the whole group.  Attendance at school is, I suspect, more general here than in any other country in the world.  The last report of W.P.  Kamakau, the President of the Board of Education, made in March, 1872, returns 8287 children actually attending upon 245 schools of various grades, 202 being common schools.  Under this system there is scarcely a Hawaiian of proper age who can not both read and write.

Churches they maintain by voluntary effort, and their contributions are very liberal.  They take a pride in such organizations.  Dr. Coan’s native church at Hilo contributes $1200 per year to foreign missions.

There are no beggars, and no public paupers except the insane, who are cared for in an asylum near Honolulu, and the lepers, who are confined upon a part of Molokai.  The convicts and the boys in the reform school contribute to their own support by their labor.  The Queen’s Hospital is only for curable cases, and the people take care of their own infirm, aged and otherwise incapable dependents.

It seems to me that very unusual judgment has been shown in the manner in which benevolent and penal institutions have been created and managed among these people; for the tendency almost everywhere in countries which call themselves more highly civilized is to make the poor dependent upon charity, and thus a fatal blow is struck at their character and respectability.  Here, partly of course because the means of living are very abundant and easily got, but also, I think, because the government has been wisely managed, the people have not been taught to look toward public charity for relief; and though we Americans, who live in a big country, are apt to think slightingly of what some one called a toy kingdom, any one who has undertaken to manage or organize even a small community at home will recognize the fact that it is a task beset by difficulties.

But in these Islands a state, a society, has been created within a quarter of a century, and it has been very ably done.  I am glad that it has been done mainly by Americans.  Chief-justice Lee, now dead, but whose memory is deservedly cherished here; Dr. Judd, who died in August, 1873; Mr. C.C.  Harris, lately Minister of Foreign Relations, and for many years occupying different prominent positions in the Government; Dr. J. Mott Smith, lately the Minister of Finance; Chief-justice Allen, and Mr. Armstrong, long at the head of the Educational Department, the father of General Armstrong, President of the Hampton